“We’re under attack!” Victor roared!

The generals looked confused. They were fighting a wave… of course they were under attack!

“Not like that!” she groused. “There’s trouble inside the fortress!”

Messengers had gone missing. Reports weren’t coming back. Entire hospitals had gone dark. Several shifts hadn’t reported to the front over the last hour. It all pointed to one thing.

“There’s an enemy inside the nest,” Victor declared, a grim light gleaming in her eyes. “We need to rally the troops and find out what’s going on. If we can reach the Eldest and bring them into the battle, then there’s no opponent we can’t beat.”

The hundreds of ants clustered around her in the command post appeared shaken, but determined. How the fortress could have been infiltrated without the Colony knowing, it was almost unthinkable. Through the layers of fortified walls, the enchantments, the endless patrols, the hundreds and thousands of ants, the mages on constant alert!

But that didn’t matter now. No matter how’d they’d gotten in, if Victor said they were under attack, then they were.

“Quickly, to me!” she ordered.

The ants rallied bravely and rushed from the chamber, forming into ranks as naturally as breathing.

“Send runners to the walls, let them know what’s happening. They need to hold at all costs!”

Several scouts dashed away.

In the corridors, they found Advant, leading a charge of her own.

“Sister, what’s going on?” demanded the big soldier. “There’s something very wrong inside the nest!”

“I believe we’re under attack,” Victor replied grimly, her mandibles grinding together. “Come with me, we need to get a hold of this quickly and find the Eldest!”

They hadn’t gone far when the scouts returned from the walls, frazzled after their lightning fast run.

“The guardians have reported to the walls!” they reported. “The three of them are spread around the fortress and are holding off the wave!”

“Finally, some good news,” Victor said, relieved. “Tell the troops to fall back and join us here. If the guardians can give us some breathing room, we can right the situation inside the nest and then get back to the defence before things are too far gone.”

“That sounds good, but we need to move fast,” Advant agreed. “I’ll take these ants and go ahead, you gather up everyone from the walls and follow after.”

“Sounds good.”

In short order, the soldier had the ranks organised and set off toward the central shaft.

Victor watched as they set off, and then waited. Every moment that passed felt like a lifetime, but she knew Advant was capable, more than capable, of dealing with whatever she found. Soon, the troops from the walls began to trickle in. A few hundred at first, but then in their thousands. Weary, injured, and still recovering from their heroics on the walls, they were more than a little confused at being pulled from the fight ahead of schedule.

Getting them organised and moving was no small task, but it was exactly this kind of situation that Victor specialised in.

“Generals to me! Medics, take everyone who is too injured to fight into the central planning chamber and establish an emergency hospital there. I want an assessment checkpoint set up for every ant to move through as they come from the walls. Scout leaders to me. Stick to your squads. Move, move, move!”

In a shockingly short amount of time, she had divided the fighting fit ants into four columns and had them advancing towards the shaft.

It had been common design practice for the Colony, going back to before their rebirth as Formica Sapiens, to construct their nests with a main, vertical shaft connecting all levels in the nest.

With the design of this fortress, that had changed. The carvers had decided that having a single shaft that gave access to the entire nest was too risky, and had instead broken it into segments. Although each segment was close to the previous one, it created a chokepoint that the Colony could defend should an enemy invade.

Naturally, taking control of as much of the central shaft as possible was the first priority on Victor’s plan of attack.

“Follow me! Forward, into the breach!” she called, leading her troops from the front and straight down into the shaft.

The scent trails left behind by Advant and her troops were thick in the air, they’d already been here and gone ahead. She had to catch up quickly!

Things were quiet, eerily so, inside the vertical tunnel. Normally, the veritable heart of the fortress, filled with ants rushing up and down, now it was deserted. Victor saw nothing but a blank tunnel ahead of her, whilst behind, thousands of troops marched in her wake.

Whatever had happened to the nest, whoever had done this, they would pay.

They reached the bottom of the shaft without incident and exited, moving down the wide tunnel that led to the next segment of the shaft. When they reached it, Victor knew immediately that something was very wrong. Instead of the huge, arterial path that connected the depths of the nest to the peaks, she saw… nothing.

Inside was simply… darkness.

Like a fog or mist, the inky black void rippled and shifted, occasionally sending wisps or tendrils into the air that curled in on themselves before they dissipated like smoke, or fell back down to merge with the shadows below. It was almost as if they were staring into the deepest and darkest depths of the shadow sea.

Was this an invasion by monsters of the second stratum? That made no sense!

Whatever the case may be, the scent trails of Advant and her leading party plunged directly into the abyss, vanishing at the edge of the pool. Victor was hesitant. The Eldest was further down, and if she could connect with the troops fighting in the depths, they’d have the numbers necessary to storm the rest of the fortress. She had to go down.

“We’re going in, everyone. Pass the word back, get in formations. I want fire mages up front in every squad, burning a bright flame. We need all the light we can get.”

“General, should we fire down into… that?”

She shook her head.

“We can’t take the risk, we might be firing into the backs of our own sisters. We have to go in blind and be prepared for anything. There’s no time to waste.”

She waited for precisely one minute as the changes she demanded rippled through the ranks and then plunged forward herself. The darkness almost seemed to rise up to welcome her inside, but she didn’t hesitate. The moment she stepped down the wall of the shaft, her vision was gone, but nevertheless she continued forward, her antennae sweeping the ground before her.

The flames of the mages helped a little, but not much. The black mist seemed to smother the lights, thickening, crowding close around the fire until they were barely there, illuminating a scant few metres around them, no matter how much mana was poured in.

Sound was muted too, Victor almost couldn’t hear her own claws on the stone as she descended, nor those of the thousands of ants following behind her. It was almost as if she were alone there, in the dark.

Despite the illusion of isolation, she knew that she wasn’t alone, she had the scent trail of her sister, Advant, under her antennae the whole time.

“Nothing sighted, moving forward. Nothing sighted, moving forward. Darkness is definitely mana based, some sort of blinding attack? Nothing sighted, moving forward. Stay together, team!”

The constant stream of orders and observations was a comfort to Victor as she followed the trail put down by her sister.

“No variation in the density of the shadows. No gaps either. Hopefully not all of the shaft segments are obscured in this way. It’s so dark in here I feel like I’m in torpor. Nothing sighted, moving forward. Keep the formation tight on the left flank! I can feel you shifting over there, keep an antenna on the ant to your right! Don’t fall asleep on us, stay alert!”

Professional and brave as always.

“Don’t fall asleep! Nothing sighted, moving forward…. Nothing sighted, moving forward…. Don’t… fall asleep! Keep the formation! Nothing sighted… moving… forward…. Feeling… so tired. Stay with me… everyone. Nothing… sleeping… moving… sleepward…. So… dark…. Sleepy…. Tired…. Torpor…. Is…. calling…. Isn’t it…. Victor?”